Category:Harv and Sfn template errors

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This category holds articles that use any of the short-cite templates ({{harv}} and {{sfn}} template families, and {{harvc}}) where one or more of those short-cite templates do not properly link to a full citation, the target, or where multiple full cites can be the target of a single short-cite template.

adding a missing full citation. When short citations are copied from one article to another without a full citation, you can sometimes find the full citation in a related article using Wikipedia's search feature.

correcting the author and/or editor names in either the short or full citation so that they match each other

correcting or adding dates in either the short or full citation so that they match each other; remember that date ranges are separated with an ndash character (–)

converting a plain-text full citation into a templated citation using one of the cs1|2 families of templates (e.g. {{Cite book}}) or one of the Vcite family of templates (e.g. {{vcite book}})

change cs1|2 template redirect names that do not begin with cite or cita to the target of the redirect (e.g. change {{encyclopedia}} to {{cite encyclopedia}})

wrapping a plain-text citation inside {{wikicite}} and setting |ref= or |id= as appropriate to match the value expected by the short-cite template

placing {{anchor}} adjacent to the plain-text citation; set the {{anchor}} parameter value to the value expected by the short-cite template

When a short-cite template links to a full citation that is rendered by a template that wraps a CS1 template, like {{cite DNB}} (which wraps {{cite encyclopedia}}), a no target error may be displayed even when the short-cite template is valid and the link works. That is a "false positive" error. If you find what looks like a false positive error, please report it on the talk page for this category, and another editor will either fix the article or add the template in question to Module:Footnotes/whitelist.

The short-cite templates employ an article reader to read the article's raw wikitext (the same text that you see in the source editor's edit window). While reading the wikitext, the article reader looks for a variety of templates that can create anchor IDs. For each such template found, the article reader attempts to extract the necessary information to create an image of the template's anchor ID, if it would produce one. For cs1|2, the most common long-form citation templates, depending on the state of |ref= the article reader looks for:

|ref=harv: contributor / author / editor surname parameters and the year portion of the date

|ref={{sfnref}}: the information held in {{sfnref}} (or its redirect {{harvid}})

|ref=<plain text>: the image is the <plain text>

The article reader extracts similar information from other templates as appropriate for those templates.

Each image of a long-form citation anchor ID is saved in a list along with a tally indicating how many of that image the article reader found. When the short-cite template renders its output, it looks for its target anchor ID in the anchor-ID list:

anchor ID found and the tally is 1: short-cite template is rendered without error message

anchor ID found and the tally is 2 or more: short-cite template is rendered with a multiple target error message and the article is added to Category:Harv and Sfn template errors

anchor ID not found: short-cite template is rendered with a no target error message and the article is added to Category:Harv and Sfn template errors

The no target errors may be true errors or may be false-positive errors. For true errors, there is no anchor ID in the article to match the anchor ID expected by the short-cite template. A false-positive error occurs because the article reader can only read the article's raw wikitext, it cannot burrow into wrapper templates. Wrapper templates enclose the template that creates the anchor ID. This enclosure hides the necessary details so the article reader cannot create an image of that wrapper template's anchor ID. For example, {{cite DNB}} is a wrapper template that encloses {{cite encyclopedia}}. The values assigned to the {{cite DNB}} parameters |year= and |supplement= tell {{Cite DNB}} how to set editor names and date in its call to the enclosed {{cite encyclopedia}} which uses them to create the wrapper template's anchor ID. When a wrapped template creates a matching anchor ID that the article reader cannot see; the link from short-cite to long-form citation works but is marked with a no target false-positive error message.